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Hi everyone,

I haven't been able to find out much on this... but can anyone comment on how practical it will be for the PS4 to handle MMOs? It sounds like a much more modern machine and the the architecture makes it a lot easier to port over PC games without having to do many changes.

Sony is also trying to make the console more open to Indie developers... or is at least claiming that. Apparently they will be able to self-publish their own games without needing a big publisher like Activision.

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I wouldn't be surprised if the PS4 will have more MMOs compared to the PS3. I know that right now the PS3 has Freerealms, DC Universe Online and soon Final Fantasy 14 (plus that Second Lifesque, Playstation Home).

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In terms of technical capabilities, making an MMORPG for PlayStation 4 shouldn't be that hard--apart from in the sense that making an MMORPG is intrinsically hard.

The bigger barrier is whether it makes any business sense to do so. In that regard, the answer is, not likely.

You need to understand why consoles still exist in the first place. The problem with making a single-player game for PC is that it can be pirated. And people will pirate it, to the degree that most of your "players" will pirate it instead of paying for it. That's a big probelm if you're a game developer and want to be paid. Consoles have strong anti-piracy protections in place, which makes it so that if you make a console game, people have to pay for it in order to get to play.

But those anti-piracy protections don't come for free. You have to pay a considerable chunk of your revenue (e.g., 30%) to whoever made the console in order for them to let your game run on their console. 30% in console fees sure beats losing 90% to piracy, so that's a good deal for most single-player games.

The reason consoles have to charge that fee is that they typically lose money by selling the console hardware itself. The console business plan is to lose money on the initial hardware sale, but make it up from the games that sell. But that only works if games actually sell.

MMORPGs, however, have no need for console anti-piracy protections. That everyone has to connect to your servers in order to play your game gives you all the anti-piracy protection you need. If you want to release your game for a console, however, you still have to pay a large fraction of your revenue to whoever made the console. That means that an MMORPG developer will strongly prefer the PC platform unless his customers insist that it needs to be on consoles--and are willing to pay more for it to be on consoles.

If you could play an MMORPG on PC for $15/month or exactly the same MMORPG on a console for $20/month, which would you choose? Most people would go with PC, to the degree that releasing it for consoles isn't necessarily a good idea.

You might well prefer consoles if you think you're going to play "free to play" games and never actually pay anything. But console manufacturers understand this approach as well. If you're never going to buy any games that they'll get paid for, then they don't want you to buy their console in the first place. (Remember when Sony disabled Linux on PS3? I think this is why. Too many of the people who installed Linux on a PS3 were using it for other purposes and not buying games on it.) Console manufacturers can restrict the business model of games available for their console, and in the past, have been willing to veto a "free to play" model.

You don't release an MMORPG for consoles unless you believe that having a console version will increase your revenue by more than enough to offset the console fee. If you charge the same price for the PC version as the console version, then a lot of your console revenue will just be cannibalizing your PC revenue. You can offset that by charging more for the console version than the PC version, but that creates the problem of how many people will be willing to pay extra to play your game on a console rather than a PC. Some who might have been willing to pay $20/month for a console MMORPG might refuse just to spite you for overcharging if they see that the same game is available for PC at $15/month.

There probably is a market for a handful of console MMORPGs, to pick up people who would like to play MMORPGs, but will only play on consoles and not PCs. But there probably aren't that many such customers, so there isn't that much money to be made by catering to them.

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I know for sure SOE will be making MMORPGs for the PS4. Pretty sure they announced it at the February 20th event.

It would be feesible for Rockstar to turn Red Dead into an MMORPG. The studio that makes the series is in San Diego which is the best city outside Soeul Korea to make an MMORPG, due to the abundance of devs in the region with mmorpg development experience. Will they? Probably not.

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Everquest was on PS2. Was a prequel called Everquest Online Adventures, but it was very much an MMO, with a bigger more interesting world (completely seamless) than a lot of MMOs, with tons of instancing and sharding, coming out today.

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I have some more news on this...

1.) Blizzard's response:

"...It’s not that Blizzard don’t want to release World of Warcraft on consoles, it’s more that doing so would form too big of a challenge. Street made this clear while talking to NowGamer, pointing to the very large hard drive requirement the game has, coupled with an interface that relies heavily on keyboard and mouse use.

...

That shouldn’t kill all hope for a Blizzard MMO on the PS4, though. Street also said an MMO could work on consoles, but if Blizzard did it they’d go “in a different direction.” That at least points to the fact they have thought about it. And with next-gen console hardware expected to be very similar to PC components, it’s surely going to be very tempting to target multiple platforms for future games."http://www.geek.com/articles/games/blizzard-says-world-of-warcraft-isnt-right-for-consoles-20130313/

2.) Final Fantasy XIV"Final Fantasy XIV is due out on PlayStation 3 and PC this summer, but according to producer Naoki Yoshida, a next-gen version is also a possibility."http://gematsu.com/2013/02/final-fantasy-xiv-could-come-to-playstation-4

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I would bet on both Final Fantasy XIV and Everquest Next being on the PS4. Destiny from Bungie and "Titan" from Blizzard are likely to be console friendly as well. Will more MMO's follow suit is the big question?

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PC will be main platform for mmo's as it should be console are way to restrictive and controlled by manufactor sony or microsoft.

wii u is no competion way to limited hardware wise and what mmo marioland lol or donkey kong country land may be for the kids but wiw u is to childish gameplatform with mario 30 and zelda 25 endlessly milking the same ip over and over again no thx.

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I'm done with consoles. They cost too much and are so underpowered and only do one thing well.

As for MMOs on consoles, the problem really comes down to controls. FFXI had a good system for a controller to use, but that caused alot of PC users to not like it. When you have 100 more "buttons" to press on one format, it's hard to whiddle it down to 10-15 buttons on a console controller...Then there's the chat problem. It's unbearably horrid to chat with a controller, takes you a year to type "OK". I know they sell keyboards and mice for consoles, but then aren't you just playing a PC? Well it's more like you're playing a Mac, since it will only run Mac programs...but I won't get into how much I hate thier socialist and totalitarianistic ideals, and half his adopted family were from germany and poland during world war two (wink wink).

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unless JRPGs go back to the quality of the early PS1 and SNES days i prob wont be going back to consols to be honest.

heck evne better give me some good JRPGs for the PC.

as for MMOs on consol . . .errr it would work but, the main issue is most people who play consol play it for quick fun not something they got to invest in for months on end, heck i actually have a wii, but its mainly for when friends are over . . . .and the two JRPGs that came out on it that where actully decent.

F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used toProper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.